Sunday, February 12, 2012

(Very) Stupid Boat Tricks

Well, live on a boat long enough, and you end up doing some pretty silly things in the name of maintenance.

Like, for instance, when your 120 liter holding tank is full and will not deign to be emptied.

The holding tanks on Galactic are, according to expert opinion, of the most fail-proof design.

We flush the head and the waste enters the holding tank, which is situated directly above a through-hull.   If the through-hull is closed, the holding tank holds the waste.  If the through-hull is open, the waste flows out into the big blue sea.

Except that our through-hull was open.  And the holding tank still wouldn't empty.

It turns out that the best-fed barnacles in all the Pacific were living in the standpipe beneath the through-hull.  And they had gotten so big and fat and sassy that they were blocking egress.

So "someone" had to put on his wetsuit (the water's cold here in Tassie) and remove said barnacles and their said blockage from the outside of the boat.

That's me above ("someone") with my purpose-built barnacle-blockage clearing device - a meter of allthread hose-clamed to a broken scrub brush handle.

It worked.  I dove down.  I cleared the blockage.  One hundred and twenty liters of sewage began flowing into the water.  And I swam like hell to get away.

Too easy!

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